


~ Night of Embers ~

by Spiced_Wine



Series: Summerland [9]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crossover of ‘verses, Friendship, Gen, Maglor in Modern Day, Memories, Self-Acceptance, summerland - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 10:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17865719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiced_Wine/pseuds/Spiced_Wine
Summary: Claire and Edenel speak as the storm rages over the Manse. One-shot sequel to Storm Warning.





	~ Night of Embers ~

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Narya_Flame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narya_Flame/gifts).



 

**~ Night of Embers ~**

  
  


OooOooO

  
  
  
  
  
  
~ None of them had retired early.  
  
Edenel had not arrived at the Manse when Aelios spoke to Claire, and walked into the aftermath. She had wanted to know, had an undoubted right to know, but it had not, evidently, been an easy revelation to either tell or accept. She had stayed up into the small hours talking to Maglor, while Edenel had joined Aelios in the kitchen, tidying up the dinner things, lingering over a glass of red wine.  
  
‘Perhaps I should not have told her yet,’ Aelios admitted. ‘But I thought it better that she knew, rather than fear the unknown. Ever since I met them in Venice, this has been a weight on her shoulders; she has been plagued by doubts and fears. Maglor said there were times she felt ill, then, and weary.’  
  
‘Her body would be making adjustments,’ Edenel murmured. ‘She looks very well now, though.’  
  
‘Like the Men of Mordor,’ Aelios replied. ‘Those who were in Angmar. When Vanimórë gave the the choice of immortality, and they accepted, they changed, and rather quickly.’ An acute glance from scorched-bronze eyes. ‘You are still concerned? She is stronger than she looks, Edenel.’  
  
‘I know.’  
  
‘Then what troubles you? Because she is a woman?’  
  
‘Ah, of course I had forgotten that half the _Ithiledhil_ are women and can take on a Fell-wolf with a dagger,’ Edenel said sardonically, earning a gleam. ‘But perhaps that is my concern, actually. Claire is an academic, not a warrior, and one never knows when one may need such skills.’  
  
Aelios tilted his head. ‘Should we ask her if she wishes to learn? Although when she comes fully into the legacy of Vanimórë’s blood she may not need warrior skills, unless she chooses them. And she did kill Thuringwethil with no training whatsoever.’  
  
‘I wish I had seen it.’ Edenel said, remembering Thuringwethil of old with a flash of fury. ‘Yes, we will ask her, anyhow. Although we don’t have training in modern weapons, and in this country it’s not easy to get licenses for them.’  
  
‘Maglor knows how to use guns,’ Coldagnir said with certainty. ‘Although there may be things that would not be affected by them. It’s something we will talk of, when she’s ready.’

OooOooO

  
  
  
  
The fire was banked, glowing in deep pockets of embers; the radiators, turned down low, maintained a gentle heat in the room with small, _tick,tick’s_ of trapped air bubbles, and the old house creaked; an oddly cosy counterpoint to the storm.  
Beyond sturdy walls and closed drapes, the east wind bayed like a pack of Fell-wolves. One could imagine drawing aside the heavy curtains, seeing their shapes through the driving snow.  
  
There were no foundations for his whimsy, no wolves in Scotland these days (even had there been, he had never feared them) and certainly no Fell-wolves, the monsters sired by Sauron in ancient times; huge, black-maned, malevolent. Sauron, when he chose to take that shape, was the mightiest, most terrible of them all.  
  
He tensed his shoulders as against a cold draft or the phantom pain of claws, an ingrained reaction to the mental image, the name. When he came through the Portal, Sauron was imprisoned, not in the Void, but not, either, in a place he could escape from. Here, he was at liberty, a presence moving through the world. To sense him had been like tasting a wine supped long ago, smelling a scent one had thought forgotten. _Fire and molten-metal and ice._  
  
The Manse was safe enough, an warded place long before the first house was built on this land, and yet...He had been hunter and hunted too long to relax.  
  
At least it was not Melkor.  
  
_The collapse of galaxies in his eyes. Such hunger..._  
  
And both of them, Melkor and Mairon, so beautiful. He had thought, should not evil be foul?  
  
A faint sound brought his head around. Claire stood in the doorway, warmly wrapped in a dressing gown that brushed the floor. Her hair was tousled, and despite the fact that it was hours after midnight, she looked as if she had not slept.  
  
‘Edenel,’ she greeted him.  
  
‘Is something wrong?’ he asked then, wryly: ‘Forgive me. How could you sleep easily after what you have learned?’  
  
She crossed to a high-backed chair and sat down, glanced aside at him. ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘I’m not tired and there is a lot to...digest.’ Her gaze sharpened on him. ‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’  
  
‘Just thinking.’ He rose, lifted the whiskey bottle and raised his brows. She nodded with a tiny smile and took the glass he poured.  
‘Thank you.’ She sipped, leaned toward the slumbering fire.  
  
‘You are cold?’ he asked. ‘Shall I add some coal?’  
  
The corner of her mouth tilted up, not quite a smile. ‘I feel I _ought_ to be cold. Listen to that wind! But no, I just...fire is comforting, don’t you think?’  
  
‘It is,’ he agreed, and laid a few rounds of coal on the embers. ‘But once, there was nothing to be afraid of in the dark, when the wind howled, when the snow came.’  
  
‘Nothing?’  
  
The flames pulsed like a beating heart, licked up around the coal.  
‘Nothing. We did not know how to be afraid.’ He sat back on his heels.  
  
She looked as if she were passing the thought through her mind. The flames flickered, cast light on her face, the planes and angles of it, the line of her brows, the eyes, burnishing to silver, reminding him of a time before the black crucible. Another woman, the gentle fall of the year, a few leaves drifting down. _’Míriel, I am sorry, and I am honoured thou wouldst ask, but I think I shall never sire children...’_  
  
The wind moaned in the chimney, a forlorn dirge. He shook himself from memory.  
‘I have never been able to sleep when the wolf-winds blow,’ he said.  
  
‘The wolf-winds?’  
  
‘From the north and east in winter. So we called them. They brought storms...and worse things.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Not here, though. Just snow.’  
  
She drew the robe close at her throat, though he thought the gesture had nothing to do with the temperature.  
‘Isn’t the room bright?’ She was clearly attempting a conversational tone. ‘Snow always does that. Even here, with no streetlights, no lights on in the house, I could see my way downstairs quite easily.’  
  
He nodded, then said carefully: ‘It does, yes, but it is not just the snow, Claire.’  
  
He heard her breathing quicken; her voice came small. ‘No. It’s my eyesight. It’s getting better, and my hearing...other senses too.’  
  
‘Yes,’ he agreed. It would be. ‘But at least you now know why.’  
  
‘Maglor assured me I was not...becoming like... _her._ I was grateful for that, I just didn’t imagine there was anything more to what I was feeling.’  
  
Her. Thuringwethil. He felt his mouth twist in a grimace. ‘Maglor would know. So would Col—Aelios. So would I. There is nothing of her in you.’  
  
She watched him over the rim of the glass. ‘But there is something else.’  
  
Vanimórë’s blood, thus Sauron’s blood. And Fëanorion. A potent mixture. ‘Yes.’  
  
She shivered a little, a strange expression crossed her face, there and gone, like a shadow crossing a cloud, or that of a dreamer in a dream. She took another small sip of whiskey.  
‘You were...changed, too.’  
  
His throat was stiff. ‘Yes.’  
  
‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I know...what am I saying? Of course I don’t know, can’t even _imagine_ what you suffered, but...’  
  
‘Claire.’ He took her free, agitated hand. ‘It is all right. Most people would not even want to _try_ and imagine it.’ He did not want her to. ‘And there are parallels, similarities.’  
  
She stared up at him, grey eyes huge and shadowy. Her grip was tight.  
‘Can you change and remain the same?’ she wondered. ‘Did you? Can I still be Claire James? Am I going to become something I don’t even _recognise_?’  
  
He shook his head slowly and deliberately. But he had forgotten his own name for a while. He was all-too familiar with the fear that one would not emerge as oneself.  
‘No, Claire. Thou wilt never lose the core of thyself. That was not the purpose behind thy changing. Vanimórë would never attempt to do that, would never want to.’  
  
A tiny smile flickered. ‘I have to warn Aelios about speaking like that.’  
  
‘Sorry.’ He folded to his knees. ‘After I... _we_ , the _Ithiledhil_ , left Utumno, we were changed, yes, but we did not, either serve Melkor. Ever. We vowed it. Blood Oath. One can be changed and still retain the essence of what one is. Believe me.’  
  
She _wanted_ to believe him, he saw, but the doubt lay like a shadow under her skin. And that, he understood, how could he not? Had he and all the _Ithiledhil_ not questioned themselves?  
  
‘How did you...retain yourself?’  
  
He gazed at the red caves in the dying fire, remembered the immense smooth-carved caverns and ember-lit passages of Utumno. Titan Underworld of the North. Swallower of stars.  
‘I do not know, Claire.’ He truly did not, but he wanted to try and help her, had to find words. ‘It was...I seemed to wake from...’  
  
She drew her hand from his, settled it on his shoulder. ‘From torture,’ she said very low.  
  
Torture. Such a brief, simple word. His mind skittered over it like an insect across a pond.  
‘It was as if I...was free. His presence was not in my mind. I was still there, still in Utumno, a prisoner, but my thoughts, my mind, they were clear. It was like waking up.’ To a different nightmare.  
  
Her fingers tightened for a moment. She said almost hesitantly: ‘Your hair...it’s not well...natural is it? Not like grey or white hair...almost translucent, like milk-glass. Your eyes too.’ She sounded a little embarrassed, as if she should not notice such things, just as one would not stare at a person in a wheelchair or with a missing limb. ‘I have heard of trauma causing white hair, but I thought it was a myth.’  
  
He touched it. In this house, he, like Coldagnir/Aelios, had discarded his glamour and his hair was pulled up in a long horsetail and braided. It fell over one shoulder, coiled on the carpet. When wrapped in glamour it was shorter, still white but without the strange translucency.  
‘It was black once, like Maglor’s,’ he replied. ‘Melkor...when he saw it was changing he was fascinated.’ He heard the tautness in his voice, the huge abyss of _horror_ that dwelt behind it. Melkor’s steps, like thunder through the bedrock of the Earth, a presence that pushed sweat through the pores of the skin, set a fever in the bones. And Sauron — Mairon — watching with eyes like flame, elegant, terrible, coolly curious as a man who pins insects to a board to examine them. _But we were the insects, the experiments..._  
‘And my eyes...we did not have mirrors then, not like the ones you have here, not until later. But I think they were like Maglor’s too.’  
  
Claire’s breath caught. Her hand flew back, pressed against her mouth. Her eyes were dilated and enormous in a winter-white face.  
  
‘What is it?’ he asked quickly.  
  
‘I _felt_ something.’ The words came jagged and broken up. ‘Black fire, dreadful heat a-and _pain._ My god. Is that _you_? Was I feeling your _past_?’  
  
Edenel winced away from the look in her eyes and came to his feet, mentally cursing. ‘I should not have been so deep in memory. Claire—‘ Her brows were pinched together as if in pain.  
  
She threw out a hand. ‘Don’t you _dare_ apologise. Just....don’t. You were the victim.’ She gulped. ‘I ought to have known. I could feel something of Maglor’s emotions, his own past, even before the summer.’  
  
‘You are too open to such things.’ Vanimórë’s words came back to him, that Claire already had Elvenblood. ‘And now...we will have to be careful what we...broadcast, all of us, and you too. It can be done, and if Sauron or one of his servants ever got close—‘ He let the implication stand.  
  
She said, steadily, almost (but not quite) surprising him: ‘You weren’t here, but I told Maglor and Aelios that I felt as if someone was looking for me, ever since Summerland. Would he use me against Maglor, do you think, or just kill me?’  
  
He met her eyes, let a beat of silence pass.  
‘I believe you would be too useful, too...unique for him to kill.’ He gave her the honesty she merited. ‘And would have been even before. Thuringwethil spoke of taking you to him, I believe?’ Tensely, she nodded, took a short drink. ‘He is not the same Sauron as the one in our world, Aelios’ and I, or at least in the one where we lived, but so similar as to make no odds. Which, in a way, is a boon, we might make educated guesses as to what he could do. Aelios served him the longest, but from what I have learned, he did not change all that much.’  
  
‘Surely _Vanimórë_ served him the longest,’ she objected. Crisp, that; her legal training, he thought.  
  
‘He did, of course, but he is not here.’ He did not say that he had been, he and Vanya, and nearby. ‘And as well he is not. Here, Sauron could enslave him again, and knowing that he was not the _same_ Vanimórë would only open his mind to other possibilities. And I know if Sauron used you as bait, Vanimórë would deliver himself into his father’s hands.’ _So would we all._  
  
The flames spat suddenly, washing her face, coiling through her loose hair. She jumped, then subsided, long lashes veiling her eyes.  
She said, her soft voice blending with the howl of the storm: ‘I would never ask anyone to do that.’  
  
‘I know. Nevertheless. You made an impression on him, Claire.’ He smiled. ‘And that is rare. At first this was about Maglor, his loneliness, Vanimórë’s hatred of unfairness. It did not end that way.’  
  
One finger tapped arrhythmically against the whiskey glass. The silence stretched into the sounds storm, the snap of the fire. She moistened her lips.  
‘He avoided Sauron for long enough, if he came here after the Second World War.’  
  
‘By moving around a great deal, even drifting, a tramp they called them then, a homeless vagabond.’ An intent expression crossed her face, some stirred memory. ‘Summerland is his retreat, I suppose. Almost a peninsula, small enough to keep watch on, and with the village protecting him and Nanny from the too-curious.’  
  
‘I noticed that,’ she said with a trace of remembered amusement. ‘And still, Thuringwethil managed to get in.’ She touched her face, the faint silvery scars.  
  
‘She would not have been able to enter the house, although Vanimórë said Summerland was not a guarded place, like this, and Thuringwethil had been trailing you for a long time. She lost patience, clearly.’  
  
‘She flushed me out.’ Claire said with a hint of self-recrimination.  
  
‘Yes, but she certainly disobeyed orders by attacking you. Probably, she did not expect you to resist, certainly not to fight.’  
  
She shifted in the chair. ‘Do you know, sometimes I wake up and think it was all a dream? Everything, from the time I first met Maglor. And there’s such a _relief_ in that, just for a moment. Such a sense of _normality_. Then, everything comes crashing back. That this is real. And I —‘ He saw the confusion of guilt and love and loss in her eyes. ‘I feel...the word is exultation. That intense. Even though now, I know—’ She bowed her head, her shoulders gave one convulsive heave before she mastered herself. ‘I’ll lose everyone. Won’t I? Just like he did.’  
  
‘Claire—‘ He touched her hair, lightly. ‘There is no easy way for you. None at all. I wish there were. Maglor wishes there were, but that is the gulf between mortality and immortality. And you will _not_ lose _everyone._ ’  
  
She swallowed. ‘Did you ever wonder — I keep thinking: What if I had never met him?’  
  
‘Oh yes,’ he said softly. ‘Always. I wonder what might have happened had I not been...taken, if I had not gone north, if I had taken any other path, at any other season, or never left...’  
  
Claire raised her head. ‘What might have been.’ Her voice took on the cadences of recitation as she said: ‘ _What might have been is an abstraction_

_Remaining a perpetual possibility_

_Only in a world of speculation._

_What might have been and what has been_

_Point to one end, which is always present._

_Footfalls echo in the memory_

_Down the passage which we did not take_

_Towards the door we never opened_

_Into the rose-garden. My words echo_

_Thus, in your mind._

_But to what purpose_ _Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves_

 _I do not know._  
  
‘A poem?’ he asked.  
  
‘T.S. Elliot, yes. Burnt Norton.’ She pushed back her hair. ‘But I think I must have met Maglor if I was in St. Andrew’s. It’s not a large place, as you know, and he is not easy to overlook.’  
  
‘No,’ he smiled. ‘But have you ever considered that something in him might, quite subconsciously, have been reaching out for someone who understood, who could share his life? And that it was you?’  
  
A frown fleeted across her brow, settled into concentration.  
‘But why? I mean why me?’  
  
‘Blood calls to blood.’ Her eyes flashed up to his. ‘And you saw _something_ , felt something, even through the glamour, even despite Maglor’s deflection. You simply had to fit the facts into your mind, a mind not raised or trained to believe in myths and magic and ancient powers.’  
  
‘Did Vanimórë _say_ I had _Elven blood_?’ she demanded, sitting up straight.  
  
‘He did. There are not many. More with orc-blood unfortunately.’ He shrugged. ‘You see, though, what it could mean? Sauron might have sensed you even had you not known Maglor. He always did want to control the Elves. And you would be extremely useful, with your intelligence. It was something he always admired. That is why I believe he would not kill you.’  
  
A spasm crossed her face. ‘I can’t imagine a single scenario in which I’d serve Sauron.’ She pushed up from the chair, began to pace. ‘His servants...would they sense me — us — too?’ ‘I think it would depend on who and what they were,’ he said. ‘I doubt there are too many like Thuringwethil: Non-human, and from the Elder Days. I wish we knew more about them.’  
  
‘What about things that once were human and then became both more and less?’ Her eyes were full and unblinking on his, but her fingers bloodless as they gripped the glass.  
  
He said. ‘The Úlairi.’  
  
‘The books are not accurate,’ she said, ‘an incomplete account of very ancient times, and clearly somewhat skewed by the author’s own biases and beliefs. In the Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl were destroyed. Perhaps Tolkien thought they were or wished they were, but what if they were not, what if they were always bound to their master?’  
  
‘I have not sensed anything like them,’ Edenel told her. ‘There were presences, some old, and malicious, in St. Andrew’s, traces of Thuringwethil, but not them.’  
  
‘I can _hear_ the “Not yet,”’ Claire commented.  
  
‘Because it may indeed be a case of “Not yet”,’ he admitted. ‘But Sauron is not strong enough yet to make any overt move, or he would have. He is still moving in the shadows, much as he did after the Last Alliance, when a shadow fell over the Greenwood, and for some years people were unsure of what it was.’  
  
She nodded, put the now-empty glass to one side. ‘Unless...it’s misdirection, and he wants us to think that?’  
  
‘I was hoping you wouldn’t think that,’ Edenel said frankly. ‘Because no, we cannot afford to second guess him.’  
  
Claire lifted one shoulder. ‘We have to cover all our bases, and we simply can’t. I wonder what he looks like. It would be useful to know.’  
  
‘A good question,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He seems to be as cautious as Vanimórë was.’  
  
‘More, probably. And Vanimórë is clearly on record, if not under that name. I find it hard to believe that these days _anyone_ could be quite so...covert. Someone knows Sauron, has seen him.’ She moved to the door. ‘I’m going to make some tea. Would you like a cup?’  
  
The Aga threw heat into the stone-flagged room. Through a gap at the bottom of the blinds, snow whipped against the glass and whirled away.  
  
‘I don’t think we’ll be leaving here soon,’ Claire remarked as she filled the kettle. ‘Even if we needed to go in a hurry.’  
  
‘A couple of days. There’s a huge warm air mass out in the Atlantic. It will push in soon, with rain and high winds. Or,’ he smiled. ‘Aelios could always melt us a way out.’  
  
She laughed. ‘ _Not_ after Venice. There were actually in a few online articles...a fiery eyed angel with wings like flame. There’s a lot of theories from mass hallucination, drugs, to inter-dimensional beings or, more likely, a bolide.’  
  
He sat down at the long table as she placed a mug in front of him. ‘Thank you. An inter-dimensional being? Well, that is technically correct. And he could certainly make an impressive bolide. He did at least once before. Although we _are_ trying to what’s the expression? Slip under the radar.’  
  
Taking a drink of tea, Claire snorted, grabbed for the kitchen roll and coughed into it. ‘Not with any noticeable success,’ she said hoarsely, emerging from it as Edenel patted her back. ‘When I met Maglor and Aelios on the way here, we were having a break in a tea room and the _looks_ they were getting, and me too. A good thing you weren’t there, too.’  
  
He smiled down into his mug. ‘Well, better jealousy than another kind of scrutiny.’  
  
Her amusement faded. ‘I know and we’ve been careful, except for that time in Venice. It’s second nature with Maglor.’  
  
‘And Sauron, too, is being very careful. Almost a pity he cannot be made to show himself, it would give us something to work on.’ He went to one of the counters, pulled out a chopping board and began to rummage in the cupboards. ‘I may as well set a stew on,’ he said. ‘It should be ready by lunch.’  
  
‘I’ll help.’  
  
He cast her a sidelong glance. ‘Maglor said you did most of the cooking in St. Andrew’s.’  
  
‘I didn’t mind.’ She opened the fridge. ‘Someone had to make sure they didn’t live on pizza. Not that I have any objection to the odd pizza. What about braised beef, red wine and vegetable stew? We’ll heat the part-baked rolls to go with it.’  
  
‘Perfect. You tell me what to do, I’ll prepare.’  
  
She watched as he fried in the heavy casserole pan. ‘What were you going to cook?’  
  
‘Nothing this good.’ He stirred.  
  
‘Have you cooked all your life?’  
  
He nodded. ‘Yes. We all did. And among the _Ithiledhil_ , I was their chieftain but none were servants. We gravitated toward what we did best.’  
  
‘And what was your skill?’ She leaned against the drying rail  
  
  
He moved the pot to the simmering plate, settled the lid.  
‘In Cuiviénen I enjoyed learning and doing everything. But after Utumno...’ He set his hands apart, bowed his head. He did not want to look at her, see the expression on her face. But she deserved all his honestly.  
‘I wanted to kill, Claire.’ _Eaters of hearts, White Demons. ‘_ Those who had been our kin, those they bred as orcs. I...excelled in killing.’  
  
  
  


                                                                                 OooOooO  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> As I’m kind of doing B2Me Month, I’m using prompts on one of the Bingo Cards for this: Portal to another world, and Bad weather from the ‘Setting as a Character’ card.


End file.
